


We Have To Go Back

by the_technicolor_whiscash



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Back to the Future Au, F/M, This was so much fun, Time Travel AU, time travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 12:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13294551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_technicolor_whiscash/pseuds/the_technicolor_whiscash
Summary: Jonah Heston finds himself the reluctant assistant of mad scientist Kinga Forrester. Kinga, the eccentric genius, manages to build a time machine.





	We Have To Go Back

**Author's Note:**

> I. Love. Back to the Future.   
> Thanks to my beta reader speccygeekgrrl!

Something was off about the Forresters. From what Jonah could tell, it was a father and his daughter, with a grandmother who came by occasionally. The father looked exactly like how you’d expect a mad scientist to look. The daughter seemed to be around Jonah’s age, and though she didn’t seem to look as mad scientist-y as her father, he had a sneaking suspicion that she had followed his career path. He saw them sometimes, on his walk home from work. They were often out on the front lawn testing their bizarre inventions, many of which seemed to catch on fire without prompting. But he had never spoken to them. Not until that fateful day. 

“Hey!” Jonah heard from behind him, as he walked past their house. “You there! Tall guy!”

Jonah stopped and turned around. Apparently it was the daughter who had yelled. “I have a name, you know.”

“Don’t care. I need your help.”

“What if I say no?”

“Then the universe as we know it may be destroyed catastrophically! Come on, I don’t have all day.”

He wondered if she was exaggerating. She probably was. Hopefully. But he didn’t really want to take that chance, so he followed her. She led him through the house and into the backyard, where a complicated contraption with all kinds of switches, lights, and buttons. 

“Now, I need you to press that.” She pointed at a big red button. “And hold it down until I tell you to let go.”

Jonah pushed down on the button. Several more lights began flashing, and he raised an eyebrow. “What does this do?”

The woman looked excited. “You’ll see.”

She ran around to the other side of the device, out of Jonah’s sight. He heard the sound of banging, crashing, and sparks flying. After a minute or so of this, she ran into the house, leaving him standing there awkwardly in the yard. 

For several minutes, he stood there, wondering if this was some kind of a plot to murder him. Then, she came back out, lugging several wires, a soldering iron, and one of those masks for soldering.

“What are you doing?” Jonah asked, leaning around the device to try to see what she was getting at. 

“You’ll see! Just be patient.” 

He watched as she began soldering away. “You know, if you explain what this is to me I might be able to help. I work in the robotics division at Gizmonic.”

“Hmph. A bunch of irritating pencil pushers who doubt the credibility of mad scientists.”

Jonah rolled his eyes. “Alright.”

The woman finished soldering, and the machine began to make a whirring sound. “Aha! Finally!”

“Can I let go now?”

“Oh. Yeah. I forgot you were holding that.”

Jonah sighed. He let go of the button and stepped back. Part of him considered running as fast as he could out of the yard, but something within him told him to stay and watch. “Now can you tell me what it is?”

“This machine, if it works, will be able to get every single channel from every single tv station in the entire world. It’ll revolutionize the tv industry!”

“So you’re basically just trying to steal cable.”

She smirked. “When you put it like that, it sounds like a bad thing.”

Well, that was anticlimactic. “Can I leave? I have things to do.”

“What’s your name, tall guy?”

Jonah blinked. She hadn’t cared about that before. “I’m Jonah. Jonah Heston.”

“Jonah. My name is Kinga Forrester, and I just so happen to be the greatest mad scientist of our time.”

“You keep saying that you’re a mad scientist. Is that a big market?”

“No. The members of my family are some of the only mad scientists out there. But we hope to someday take over the world. And we will.”

“Huh. Alright, good luck with that.”

“You don’t believe me, I can tell.”

“Really? No way.”

“Don’t sass me, Heston. Don’t believe me? Follow me, and I’ll show you just how good I am.”

She started off back towards the house. Jonah raised an eyebrow, but followed. She led him into the garage, which was a full out science lab. There were bubbling beakers, funky lamps, wires and microchips everywhere, and the whole place looked exactly like how you’d expect a mad scientist’s lair to look. Jonah found himself impressed by the array of materials in the relatively small space. 

“So what exactly does a mad scientist do?” He asked, picking up a beaker of liquid. She quickly tore it from his hand and replaced it on the shelf. 

“I do whatever inventing, experimenting, and et cetera comes to mind.” She picked up a small bottle of brown liquid. “This is a cologne that kills spiders.”

“Neat.” He sprayed a little bit, sniffed it, and coughed. “You sure it’s not just insecticide?”

“That’s the unscented version. Smells better once you add things to it.”

“I hope so.” 

She picked up a small device and seemed to scan him. “This machine tells you whether or not you’re likely to go bald in the future. Apparently you’re not going to.”

“Well, that’s good to know.”

Kinga continued through the garage, explaining different inventions. Some were clearly more useful than others, but it all gave Jonah the impression that Kinga was clearly smart. She just used her brains on stupid things, like the insecticide cologne or a tv that only showed commercials and blocked out any actual programming. After all of this, she picked up a notebook and showed it to him. 

“This is where it all starts. I write all of my ideas down here, plan them out, and then bring them to life.”

Jonah flipped through the pages. “Some of these are really good ideas.” Abruptly, he closed the book. “But why are you telling me all this? You literally just pulled me off the street.”

“Because, I see you walking by here every day and you seemed chill. I was right, wasn’t I?”

“I mean, yeah. But you want something from me, don’t you?”

She sighed. “In a way, yes. I’ve been doing some of these experiments myself, and it’s just not safe or easy. I need an assistant, or at least someone to help me with some of the work. Would you be willing to do that?”

Jonah thought about it for a moment. Kinga was odd, yes, but she seemed nice enough. It couldn’t hurt to help her out every once in a while. “Sure, I’ll help you.”

“Excellent.” She pulled a business card out of her pocket and handed it to him. “My number’s on there.” 

Jonah read the card. Even her business card said that she was a mad scientist. “Alright, I’ll send you a text later.”

“I’ll call you when I need assistance. Welcome to the world of mad science, Heston.”

“Thanks, I think.” 

“Trust me. You’ll love it.”

—————

Over the next several months, Jonah became more and more familiar with what exactly mad science entailed. Kinga called him every few days to help her with experiments, sometimes at odd hours. She claimed that it was because inspiration can strike at any time. He figured she just wanted to inconvenience him. 

In this time, he barely learned anything else about her. He knew that she now lived alone. Her father had disappeared not too long before Jonah began helping her, which was why she needed an assistant in the first place. Her grandmother still stopped by occasionally, with her odd friends. Grandma Pearl kind of scared Jonah. She seemed more like an evil mad scientist, as opposed to just a benign one. Nonetheless, Kinga sometimes asked her grandmother for advice, and seemed to look up to her. 

Kinga refused to properly open up to Jonah. She never talked about her feelings, or if she did, it was cloaked so deeply that Jonah could barely tell what she meant. But there was definitely something bugging her. Something nagging, between those intelligent eyes of hers, that sometimes had her lost in thought. At times it seemed like she was a million miles away. And that could cause problems. But he didn’t want to ask her, didn’t want to pry somewhere he wasn’t welcome. Because truth be told, he was beginning to enjoy working for the mad scientist. She was eccentric, sure, and was far from warm, but she was incredibly interesting. He wanted to see just what she could do.

One day, she called him up, seeming more distracted than usual. “Jonah. Listen carefully. I need you to come to the Pine Mall parking lot at 1:00 AM tomorrow. Bring your phone. And possibly a fire extinguisher.”

“A fire extinguisher? Kinga, what are you-“

She hung up, leaving his sentence unfinished. Now he absolutely had to know what she was doing. 

The hours could not pass fast enough, despite all he tried to kill time. He hadn’t realized that he had fallen asleep until he jolted awake, immediately checking his watch. 

“12:50? Shit!” He exclaimed, immediately rolling out of bed. He didn’t bother changing into anything new, since he was still wearing his clothes from the day before. Hopefully Kinga wouldn’t notice. 

He quickly drove to the mall, fire extinguisher buckled into the passenger seat. The minute he got there, he knew something big must be happening. Kinga stood outside a large delivery truck, and seemed to be scanning the parking lot with a number of devices and jotting down the results. 

“Kinga? What’s going on? Why did you need a fire extinguisher?”

Kinga briefly looked up from her devices. “Oh, that’s just a precaution. Mine ran out.”

Jonah frowned. “How often do you have to use it?”

“More often than I’d care to admit.”

“So can you tell me what’s going on? You sounded really urgent on the phone.”

She finished writing and threw her clipboard in the general direction of a backpack, before walking up to Jonah. “Now. As you may have known, my father disappeared some time ago.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that. You never told me what had happened.”

“Well, I’m telling you now. My father decided, in his infinite wisdom, to build a time machine. It worked. But ever since he decided to travel back to 1995, I haven’t seen him. Therefore, I decided to take his initial plans, polish them, and built a time machine for myself.” 

She opened the delivery truck and, picking up a remote, steered a full-sized car out of it. 

Jonah’s eyes widened. “My god. You built a time machine… out of a DeLorean?”

“Dad’s original plan called for a Toyota, but I wanted to go with something a little more classic. Besides, I didn’t want to bother buying a new car when I had this one on hand.”

“You just happened to have a DeLorean on hand?”

“Of course. I’m a woman of good taste.” She opened the door of the car, and it flew up. “See? Isn’t this cool?”

“I mean, of course it’s cool. But does it work? Have you tested it out yet?”

“No. And that’s where you come in. I want you to take it and drive it one minute into the future.”

Jonah took a step back. “You seriously want me to be your guinea pig? No. No way. I’ve been fine with helping you, with finding the weird shit you ask for, with leaving stink bombs in the classrooms of the professors you didn’t like at Gizmonic. But I’m not testing out a damn time machine for you!”

Kinga almost looked hurt. “Wh…”

“Don’t you have, like, a dog or something you can test it out with?”

“Well, what if I came with you?”

“Then how would we know if we had actually driven it into the future?”

She held out two stopwatches. “Take one with us, leave one here.”

Jonah looked between her face and the stopwatches. He shouldn’t do it. It was an untested, unproven scientific experiment, with completely unknown consequences. If things went wrong, he could end up dead. But for some reason, whether it was some inner spark of mad science within him or something else, something he didn’t yet understand, he couldn’t stop himself. 

“Alright. Fine. I’ll drive the car. But if we die, I swear to god-“

He was cut off by Kinga giving him a peck on the cheek. “Excellent. Let’s get going.”

He stood there for a moment, and his hand subconsciously floated up to where she had kissed him. Why did he suddenly feel all warm?

“Hey! You already agreed! Get in the car!”

“Right. Sorry.” He muttered, sliding into the car and pulling the door down. “So how does it work?”

“I’ve already got the machine all set up. Basically, this thing here-“ She motioned to an odd glowing mechanism in the back of the car. “Is the flux capacitor. It’s what makes all of this work. You put when you’re going, when you are, and the time you last departed into here, and then you floor it. It’s gotta hit 88 miles per hour to be able to work.”

“Why 88? Why not just round it up to 90?”

“Because, I’ve done the math, and 88 is the speed in which you go. There’s no changing it.”

“Alright. And if you don’t hit 88?”

“It just drives like a regular car. Albeit a regular car powered by plutonium.”

Jonah frowned. “This thing’s radioactive?”

“Only mildly. It’s not much.”

“So do you have to refuel every time you take a trip?”

“No. Well, at least I don’t think so.”

“Ah. That fills me with so much confidence.”

“Stop asking questions and start driving.”

Jonah turned the car on, and found that his heart was racing. This could either be a momentous scientific discovery or kill them painfully. Nonetheless, after a moment’s hesitation, he slammed his foot on the gas, sending them speeding off. 

Twenty. 

Thirty. 

Forty. 

Sixty. 

Eighty. 

Lights. A loud bang. The screech of tires as Jonah slammed onto the break. 

They made it. But had it worked?

Kinga leapt out of the car, even before they had come to a complete stop. Jonah watched as she compared the two stopwatches, and after a moment she laughed loudly. 

“Did it work?” Jonah asked, sliding out of the car. 

“Yes! It worked!” She held up the stopwatches. “Look! This one, which remained here, is exactly one minute after the stopwatch we had in the car with us! It worked!”

Jonah took a step back, accidentally touching the hood of the car. He abruptly pulled his hand back. “Yikes, it burns.”

“Not hot, though. It’s cold. Side effect of the temporal displacement, that sort of thing.”

“But you… you actually did it. You built a working time machine.”

Kinga grinned. “Did you ever doubt me?”

He did, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “Not a bit.”

She pushed past him and climbed back into the car, pressing buttons and flipping switches. “There. Now we can go and try to find my dad.”

Jonah sighed. “Now, wait. I agreed to be your guinea pig for the test run. But I’m not going back to the 90’s with you.”

Her smile quickly turned into a frown. “What? Why not?” 

“Because, you’ve seen all of those time travel movies! What happens if I run into myself, or my parents, or someone important and accidentally kill them! As cool as it would be to travel back in time, there’s so much risk. And do we even know if it’ll work backwards?”

“Yes, I know that travelling backwards in time has different logistics than travelling forwards. But I’ve done all the math! I’ve checked it a million times, run it through a computer, and even had my grandmother look at it! It’s going to work, Jonah. It _has_ to work.”

He took a deep breath. He could barely even believe the fact that he was considering going with her. But something told him to go, though he didn’t know whether it was his gut, brain, or heart pushing him to. 

“Alright. Alright. I’ll come with you. But just to find your dad. I don’t want to risk causing any catastrophic accidents in the future. Or… present?”

“Time travel tense is notoriously funky. It’s best not to think too hard about it.”

“Right. Of course.”

“Now, it’s my turn to drive. Get in the passenger seat.”

“Aw, really? I wanted to drive.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

“Eh. It was worth a try.”

Jonah slid into the passenger seat and pulled the door down. His heart rate picked up again. He had gotten over the initial fear of death and destruction, and was now simply afraid at what they would find in the nineties. 

Kinga turned the car on and gripped the steering wheel. “Ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

—————

Something had happened. Jonah remembered Kinga flooring the gas, the car speeding up to 88, and then… darkness. When he opened his eyes, something was definitely wrong. It took him a second to register that he was slouched over the dashboard, the smell of burning penetrating his nostrils. 

A sense of urgency finally kicked in, and he realized exactly what had happened. The car had rammed into a tree. Evidently, the parking lot was not as big as they had expected. 

He fiddled with his seatbelt, before it finally came undone. Panic began to well in his chest. Were they actually in the 90’s? If they were, how would they get back to modern day? 

And… what happened to Kinga?

His eyes whipped to the driver’s seat, where Kinga no longer sat. The driver’s side door was open, so she had probably gotten out that way. 

Phew. 

Jonah tried to open the door on his side, only to find it jammed shut. He decided to climb into the driver’s seat and slide out that way. Once he was out, he looked back at the wrecked chassis of the car. 

“Damnit. We’re not getting that thing back.” He muttered. 

He looked around, but instead of finding Kinga, he found that he was alone. 

“Kinga? Are you hiding or something?”

No reply. 

“Kinga? Where are you?”

Great. He was alone, most likely twenty years in the past, and had no idea where to go. He patted around his pockets, eventually finding his cell phone. 

“Damnit. No bars.”

The mall was closed, since it was still around one AM, just twenty years earlier. He couldn’t go to the police, since they would hardly believe such a story. So to find Kinga, he would probably have to go back to the source of why they were even there in the first place: her father.

Dr Forrester was not a hard man to find, if you were just looking at his appearance. His mustache, constantly unruly hair, and characteristic green Gizmonics lab coats were easily recognizable. And it was easy enough to locate the evil scientist in the phone book, since he was pretty much the only name listed under “Evil Scientists.” But Jonah wasn’t looking for the Dr Forrester from the nineties, the one who, by this point, had already kidnapped his second test subject for his notorious (yet entertaining) experiment, Mystery Science Theater 3000. He was looking for the modern Dr Forrester, the one who lived with his daughter, had married TV’s Frank, and was no longer trapping people in satellites. And he would undoubtedly be harder to find. 

Jonah made his way to where the Forresters lived in the modern day. Or, where they would live, if the building had been constructed yet. At that point in time, there was only a large field, with what appeared to be a raging college party occuring in the woods some distance away. 

He sighed. “Well, there are worse places to start.”

He made his way over to the party, and though he seemed to be a little older than all of the kids there, he wasn’t exactly out of place. Somehow, he ended up with a beer in his hand, sitting around a fire while people talked, drank, and smoked. Eventually, he managed to get a word in edgewise to a junior who at least seemed to be slightly more sober. 

“So, hey, I’m kind of new around here, and there’s someone I’m looking for. You wouldn’t happen to know an evil scientist who probably lives around here?”

“Only evil scientist I can think of is Dr Forrester. Last I heard he was doing something weird with the old clock tower.”

“Do you know his address?”

“Somewhere down on Thirteenth Street. You’ll know the place. There’s a bunch of radio antennas sticking out of the roof.”

“Awesome. Thanks, man.”

“No problem.” The student seemed to examine Jonah’s face. “You single?”

Jonah was glad for the dark, because he found himself blushing. He didn’t quite know how to answer the question. “It’s… kind of complicated. Sorry.”

“No problem, man. Have fun looking for the evil scientist.”

\--------------

Jonah made his way to the center of town. By now, a few hours had passed, and the sun was starting to rise, giving the town a slight glow. After getting lost only a few times, he found the Forrester household. It was an ugly, ramshackle-looking house, with the aforementioned radio antennas scattered around the roof, and a man standing on the chimney in a bright green lab coat lugging some kind of weather observation device.

“Hey! Dr Forrester!” Jonah yelled. 

Evidently he surprised the man, because he yelped before slipping, falling, and ended up hanging off of the gutter. 

“What the hell is wrong with you, twerp!” Dr F yelled, as he scrambled back onto the roof. It was definitely the Forrester from the future. His mustache and wild hair were significantly more grey than they would have been on his younger counterpart, and even from a distance he could see wrinkles that betrayed his age. 

“Dr Forrester, this is going to be hard to believe, but I came from the future with your daughter Kinga! She wanted to travel back in time to find you, but our time machine kind of crashed and I’m pretty sure it’s probably leaking radiation into the mall parking lot, but anyway, I can’t find her.”

Dr F frowned. “Really? I had no idea she would come looking for me. Well, it’s too bad. I’m not coming back.”

“What? Why?”

“Because! There’s so many projects I never finished in the past that ended up destroyed or confiscated by the Homeowners Association! I mean, I might come back eventually. But not when there’s so much more work to be done!”

Jonah pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Dude, your daughter built a time machine just to find you, and now she’s missing. At least help me find her.”

Dr F seemed to think on that for a moment. “Fine. But I’m not coming back with you.”

“Alright. We also may need some help fixing the time machine, since it’s kind of broken.”

“That’s probably the more pressing matter. Let me get down from here and I’ll come with you to check it out.”

They proceeded back to the mall, where they saw two people standing near the wreckage of the car: Kinga… and Dr Forrester. The Dr Forrester from the 90’s. The modern Dr F took advantage of Jonah’s initial pause and abruptly jumped behind a bush. 

“What are you doing?” Jonah asked.

“If I meet myself from the past, it could severely screw up the universe! At best, I fall unconscious and get a brief bout of amnesia, but at worst, the whole of the spacetime continuum is destroyed!”

“Ok, so that is a bad idea. But you’re going to have to talk to Kinga eventually and explain yourself.”

“I know, I know.” He paused. “Why do you care so much about my daughter anyway?”

“Because she’s my friend, and I’m genuinely concerned for her wellbeing.” And because she made his heart race. But he wasn’t about to tell her father that. 

Dr F gave him a skeptical look. “Right. Well, you go and deal with younger Me, and I’ll wait here in this bush.”

Jonah turned so that Dr F couldn’t see him blatantly rolling his eyes. He left Dr F in the bush, and headed over towards Kinga and her father. They were so absorbed with the wreckage of the time machine that they didn’t even notice him approach. 

He cleared his throat. “Uh, hi.”

Kinga’s eyes widened when she saw him. “Jonah? Where have you been?” 

“Where have I been? Kinga, you left me in a car wreck, without even a note telling me you were ok.”

“I left so that I could find help! When I came to, you were slumped over the dash, and I didn’t want to be responsible for killing my own assistant two decades in the past.”

“How come it took you so long?”

“Because I had to convince this jackass to listen to me!” She waved towards Dr F from the past, who looked offended. 

“Hey, how was I supposed to know you were telling the truth?” Dr F asked.

“Ah, yes, because there’s so many people in the 90’s who have smartphones.”

“I don’t even know what that is!”

“See? This is why you should have listened to me three hours ago, before you spent hours talking about how you were going to torture Mike Nelson! I don’t care! I already know about how you’re going to torture him! You used to tell me about the experiment as a bedtime story!”

“Well, I know that _now_.”

“Oh my god. We’ll talk about this later. Right now we need to assess the problem at hand.”

Jonah glanced over the car. “Yes, this giant, crushed, bent, destroyed problem.”

“It’s not that bad. The flux capacitor still seems intact, and the only thing that seems seriously damaged is the front. If we’re lucky, it didn’t affect the engine block or anything that we need to drive.” She walked up to the front of the car. “We’re gonna have to push this away from the tree. Jonah, Dad, you push, I’ll steer.”

Jonah raised a brow. “How come I can’t steer? Your steering got us into this problem in the first place.”

“Because you’re tall, which means you’re probably stronger than I am. Now shut up and push.”

Jonah rolled his eyes but conceded. As Kinga attempted to turn the car on, Dr F approached him. 

“Listen, kid. I don’t know much about you, or much about my adult daughter, since last I saw her she was still a child, but I can tell that you like her.”

“Well, of course I like her. She’s a good person. She can be a little eccentric at times, but-“

“You know full well that’s not what I’m talking about. You’ve got a crush on her.”

Jonah sighed. “Yeah. Please don’t tell her.”

“Why not? I don’t have anything to lose.” 

Before Jonah could refute, Kinga’s voice yelled from the car. “Car’s not turning on! Push it!”

Forcing his whole body weight against the car, Jonah soon realized that it wasn’t going to move. 

“Sorry! Forgot to put it in neutral!”

“Oh come ON!”

“Just push it, Heston!”

Jonah once again pushed against the car, and this time it actually rolled backwards. Once it got to a point reasonably away from the tree, Kinga put it back into park and hopped out. She popped the hood, and the trio examined the car’s intestines. 

After a moment, Dr F spoke up. “You know, I know nothing about cars.” 

Kinga sighed. “Delightful.”

“And, as much as I would love to stand here staring at your car’s engine, I do have an experiment to get back to. I don’t like leaving Frank down there alone for too long. Nelson constantly tries to manipulate Frank into letting him go.”

“Fine. Go if you want.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You weren’t even the one I was looking for anyway.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Dr F looked skeptical, but waved a hand and walked off. Kinga balled her fist, and Jonah raised an eyebrow. 

“Something wrong?”

“He’s such a dick. He was never such a dick the whole time growing up… though honestly, I didn’t often see him when I was very young. He was so busy with the experiment that Grandma Pearl mostly raised me. By the time I was grown, he had finally matured enough to be a better father. Apparently it also took that long for him to not be an awful person.”

It took a moment for Jonah to realize the weight of what Kinga had just said. She had never told him anything even remotely as personal as that in the past. Did it mean that she was beginning to trust him more? Maybe the barriers she had put up were finally beginning to crumble. 

Hesitantly, he put a hand on her shoulder. “Sometimes it takes a while for people to really grow up and become… not terrible.”

“You don’t say.”

“Sorry if I crossed a line. I’m not exactly the best at giving advice.”

Her expression softened. “No, no. I appreciate it. It’s just… this whole thing is really weird for me. And I don’t even know where my real– I mean, the modern version of my dad is.”

“Oh, wait, I do. He’s hiding in that bush over there.”

Kinga’s brows furrowed. “Seriously? Why?”

“Apparently he didn’t want to run into himself from the past because it might mess up the space-time continuum or something.”

“Makes sense. Come on. We can deal with the car later.”

She grabbed his hand, and they dashed off in the direction of the bush. Once they got there, however, there was something missing. 

Jonah rubbed the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “Damnit. He must’ve run off.” 

“Of course he did. Well, he can’t’ve gotten far. Plus he has the stamina of a dead squirrel. Where did you find him in the first place?” 

“A house a couple of streets over.”

“He probably went back there. Let’s go.”

Jonah paused. “Wait. Before we do, there’s something you should know. When I talked to your dad, he told me he didn’t want to come back to the future.”

Her face fell. “Why? Why did he say that?”

“He told me it was so he could finish up more of his projects from the past. He said he would help us get back to the future, but he wouldn’t come with us.”

“That son of a bitch.” She took a deep breath. “Well, we’ll just have to convince him to come with us. And if he doesn’t want to come, we’ll kidnap him.”

“Uh, I’m sure we won’t have to go that far.”

“We’ll see. Lead the way, Heston.”

Once they reached the Forrester household, things were quickly deteriorating. 

“What the hell do you mean you’re not coming back with us?” Kinga yelled, causing Dr Forrester to take a step back. 

“Honey, please try to understand–“

“That’s the thing, though, I can’t understand why you would want to leave a perfectly good life, where you have a husband and a child, to live back twenty years in the past, when you were an irritating bag of dicks! And what happens if you run into yourself?”

“I remember where I’ve been, I know I won’t run into myself.”

“I built a time machine just to be able to find you and bring you back. I thought you might be in trouble. I worried about you!” She started towards the door. “You know, I guess you really haven’t changed that much after all. Come on, Jonah, let’s go.”

Jonah started to follow, but paused. He turned back to Dr F. “The 90’s weren’t all that great, you know.”

“I’m not here for the decade, I’m here because I have work to do.”

“Work that you can finish in the future. Come on, dude. You’re just looking for excuses at this point. Oh, and she’s planning on kidnapping you if you don’t come with us willingly.”

Dr F smiled sadly. “She really is just like me.”

Kinga popped her head back into the room. “Heston! What’s taking you so long? We need to get the time machine running.”

“Wait.” Dr F said. “I’ll come with you back to the future. Your weird nerd friend has made me realize that I was being selfish.”

Kinga turned to Jonah. “You did?”

Jonah felt himself turning pink. “He’s giving me way too much credit.”

“Hmm. Well, come on, you two, we need to fix the DeLorean.”

—————

“Try it now!” Jonah yelled, after fiddling with something else in the engine. 

Kinga turned the key, and after a few tries, it finally turned over. “Get in! I don’t know how long it’ll stay going, so we have to gun it!”

Jonah slammed the hood down and jumped into the car. Unfortunately, he had to sit squished between Kinga and Dr Forrester. 

Kinga mashed a few buttons on a keypad, and the flux capacitor lit up. Then, she slammed her foot on the gas, throwing Jonah against the back of the seat. The seconds between when the car began moving and when it hit 88 were some of the tensest that Jonah had ever felt. If this didn’t work, they were all seriously screwed. 

But it did work. At 88, there were those same lights that Jonah had seen on the initial test. The same loud bang. The same screech of tires, once they had reached their destination. 

Jonah released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. 

They all slid out of the car, and the first thing that Jonah noticed was that Kinga’s delivery truck was still there. He checked his phone. Full bars. It was definitely where they had come from. 

“We’re back.” He said, after a moment. “How much time has passed since we were last here?”

Kinga looked at both of the stopwatches. “Not more than a few minutes.”

“Good. Now I can go home and get some rest.” 

“Wait.”

“What? Did we forget something in 1995?”

“No, no. It’s just… why do you care so much about me? No one’s ever been nice to me like you have.” 

“I care about you, Kinga, because…” He took a deep breath. “Because I love you. You’re smart, and funny, and just the right amount of weird.”

“Jonah, I…” She paused. “I love you, too. I don’t know if I realized it until now.”

Jonah’s heart raced. “Really?”

“Yes. Really.” Kinga smiled, a brilliant, beautiful smile that lit up the dark parking lot they stood in. 

Swept up in the moment, Jonah found himself pressing a kiss to her lips. He was going to pull away, but soon found that Kinga’s arms were around his neck, pulling him closer. 

After a moment, they finally separated, her arms still around him. Jonah found himself smiling like a dork. 

“Ahem,” a voice spoke out of the dark. “I’m still here.”

Kinga cringed, quickly untangling her arms from Jonah’s neck. “Oh, shit. Right. Sorry, dad.”

Dr F laughed. “Ah, you kids have fun. I’m gonna go home. And then explain to Frank where I’ve been for the last few months.”

“You have fun with that.”

“And you, there, Jonah. Be nice to her.” 

Jonah nodded. “I will, sir.” 

Dr F and his green lab coat sauntered off, leaving Jonah and Kinga alone. 

“So.” Jonah said. “What do we do now.”

“Well, I think first we have to deal with our broken time machine. Then we can do whatever we want.”

“Sounds like a plan.” 

“And, you know, I was thinking, we could probably use this time machine to time travel to other places. Like we could see concerts, or historic events, or even the future.”

“Are you sure you want to mess in time like that?”

“I mean yes, there are risks. But this is science. No risk means no rewards.”

“Alright, then, where do we want to go first?”

“How about the future?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was so much fun to write


End file.
